Eva Hoffman grew up in Cracow, Poland, where she studied music intensively before emigrating in her teens to Canada and then the United States. After receiving her Ph. D. in English and American literature from Harvard University, she worked as senior editor at The New York Times, serving for a while as the newspaper’s regular literary critic. She is the author of Lost in Translation, Exit Into History, Shtetl, The Secret. and After Such Knowledge. She has also written for many journals and periodicals, and has lectured internationally on issues of exile, memory, Polish-Jewish history, politics and culture. She has taught literature and creative writing at various universities, including the University of East Anglia, MIT and Columbia. She has written and presented radio programmes, and has received the Prix Italia for Radio. Her literary awards include the Guggenheim Fellowship, the Whiting Award for Writing and an award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She currently lives in London, and works as visiting professor at Hunter College, CUNY.